May 22, 2013

While companies such as Facebook and Google rely on users for content and profits, as Ari Melber explains at thenation.com, they use one-sided “Terms of Service” contracts to exclude these same content providers from negotiating control of their pictures, text and personal data.

In this Nationessay, Ari Melber, Woodrow Hartzog and Evan Selinger team up to call on social media companies to recognize user rights: “Social media companies say consumer privacy is just the cost of doing business. But what would happen if they actually had to bargain with users on equal footing?”

TO WATCH

This video conversation explores a recent unilateral move made by Facebook that could, according to Baker Hostetler attorney Gerald Ferguson, allow the socila media company the unfettered right to sell user data to any advertising agency Facebook has a stake in.